You'll never get anything done if you walk around with an unchipped heart.

I instantly chucked my academic ambitions and began writing fiction full-time.

These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.

I wish I could go back and re-write my first novel for the first time. Because I really didn't know what I was doing, and although it was published, it is, after all this time, kind of an embarrassment.

Nobody can protect anybody else from vileness. Or from pain. All you can do is not let it break you in half and keep on going until you get to the other side.

I liked the place I came from. But a lot of what I liked about it was that I had come from there.

I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do.